Beer lovers, rejoice! An open-source project has developed a portable beer tap that can dispense any kind of suds you want.
The company鈥檚 prototype, called the , sits on your kitchen counter and dispenses beer鈥攅ven from the most obscure craft breweries. The secret behind this is a new kind of flexible packaging that holds the equivalent of about eleven 12-ounce beer cans, says SYNEK strategic director Mike Werner.聽
The idea is that any brewery can fill up the bags and ship them out in cartridges, which look like the boxes coffeehouses sell for meetings. Take a box home, pop it into the toaster-size SYNEK, and pour a cold one whenever you want. The cartridges keep the beer fresh for about 30 days and are as easy to store as a bag of ground coffee.
More than 700 breweries nationwide have already agreed to start packaging their beer in SYNEK-friendly containers. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not asking any favors. We鈥檙e solving a problem for these breweries,鈥 Werner says.
According to Werner, the SYNEK system will give small breweries, which couldn鈥檛 otherwise afford to distribute their product nationwide, a way to reach more drinkers. It鈥檚 a simpler distribution solution than growlers, which are tricky to transport, keep beer fresh for only a few days, and can taint the brew鈥檚 flavor.
The SYNEK bags, on the other hand, are inexpensive and don鈥檛 affect the flavor. 鈥淏reweries just want to make sure the product gets to your home as it was intended,鈥 Werner says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what we鈥檙e all about.鈥
This magical draft machine offers one more exciting possibility. Werner says he doesn鈥檛 see why the SYNEK couldn鈥檛 one day be battery-operated鈥攎eaning you could have a super-portable beer tap on hand for, say, an all-day hike. A fresh, cold craft brew (not that subpar powdered stuff) in the middle of the woods? Now we鈥檝e reached , in the best way.
The SYNEK System , which far surpassed its $250,000 goal with more than two weeks to go, has harnessed the power (and ample funds) of beer enthusiasts. Looks like the first SYNEK machines will indeed roll out by spring 2015.